Colour Create 41 - Pastels

Part of the reason I love working with Colour Create is the fact that they come up with the less obvious choices in their challenges. Not off the wall, by any standards, just not the usual, predictable titles.

For this fortnight, they've come up with 'Pastels' and an optional extra of 'Spring' or 'Easter' which I really like! There is still the option there for peeps who send Easter cards but it doesn't exclude those of us that don't and I don't know about anyone else, but I hate making cards that I know I'll never ever use or even give away! I just avoid those challenges.

So, for a change and in the spirit of the non-obvious Colour Create, I've chosen to avoid my favourite, and obvious, 'Spring' green & yellow hues and work in blue, which is a colour I love but seldom use for my crafting as I think it is an easy colour to make look cheap or garish.

Blue's a great Spring colour. Think of the fresh sky, even if it sometimes has a greyish tinge to it, it's still mostly blue. Think of the spring showers! Fresh water, pools of the stuff! All reflecting the blue of the sky.

Materials

For my simple card I've used pretty simple materials and method.

Although I usually use A4 cardstock and cut and score to suit, this week I've used a 21cm square gatefold card, a quantity of which my friend has sent me but I'll give the destructions for the A4 in case you don't have those.

1 x A4 white 260gsm or above cardstock

1 x sheet from DCWV 'Pocketful of Posies' 21 cm paperstock pad

1 x pale blue 21 cm squ paper from Papermania

1 x 17x10cm scrap of patterned pale blue paper (this one's from DCWV 'Spring' collection)

1 x 17.5 x 10.5 cm scrap of white card for mounting and stamping

0.5cm pale blue organza ribbon

20cm strip of sparkly blue clear gel stick-on trim from stash

Handful of very small blossom-type flowers

2 x silk daffodils

2 x silver butterflies (..not strictly 'spring' but I claim artistic license...!)
1 x silver dragonfly (...ditto...!)

Adhesives of choice.

Handful of pearlescent floral confetti

Black or grey dye inkpad
Your choice of Artstamp.

Mine is from the wonderful, but now defunct 'Stamps Happen', and is an image by the artist D.Morgan called 'Spring is Coming' (# 80270) and I've coloured it with a combination of Copics and Marvy Le Plume as some of the linework is very fine and the Marvy have that lovely fineliner at the other end of their brush.

Method

Not much method required really! This card took me less than an hour including the colouring. I made it whilst I watched an old episode of Casualty!

1) Take your A4 white card and score and fold it across at 21 cm so the front leaf is a kind of 'half' leaf (it's a little less than half with A4 but this is the easiest method.)

2) Take your patterned 'Pocketful' paper and adhere it to the inside back of the card. I used 'Sticky Dots' but you use whatever floats your boat!

3)Take the pale blue paper and cover the front leaf, taking a 1cm border strip round the back of the card. Don't forget to leave the same size border of white on both front and back leaves.

4) Strip of clear blue trim (optional) - pop down the outside edge of the back leaf approx 1cm in.

5) Take both strip of card and strip of patterned paper and stamp your image on both. (try to centre it properly or if this is tricky, it might be better to stamp first and cut to size second!)

6) Very carefully, cut round the arch on the the patterned paper so you can pop the majority of the image out, just leaving the ends of the right hand side branches poking over the edge of the paper.

7) Colour the image on the white card. I coloured the whole thing as you sometimes can't easily get all of the the white after you stick it down.

8) Carefully (again!) use a workable adhesive to stick the patterned paper over your coloured white card, ensuring the images marry up accurately. Now finish your colouring on the patterned card, matching your colouring to the image on the white card. You may have to do some colour compensation depending on what paper you have chosen, but I find white gel-pen is a great help!

9) Now take your image-stamped & coloured mat and position it on an angle on your front leaf. Faff about a bit until you're happy then very lightly mark the back in pencil where you want it to be adhered.

10) Once again, a workable adhesive might be advisable although I used wide ds tape (...such a rebel...!) to adhere your mat in the position you want.

11) Decorate with flowers and bugs as suits and tie ribbon around the spine and you're done!

Job's a good'n!

Hope you all like it!

Hugs,

Ei

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